Challenge Yourself to Live Plastic Free This July

How long can you go without single-use plastic? Take the Plastic Free July Challenge and find out!

"Think about it. Why would you make something that you're going to use for a few minutes out of a material that's basically going to last forever, and you're just going to throw it away. What's up with that?" Jeb Berrier, BagIt Movie

Three years ago, environmentalists in Perth, Australia came up with a splendid idea: Plastic-Free July.

This year, the Plastic Free July campaign offers its fourth annual challenge to the consumer: Try to go through the entire month of July without utilizing a single piece of single-use plastic.

Last year, more than 4,000 individuals, schools, businesses and organizations participated in the challenge. The initiative was also nominated for and won two major environmental awards in western Australia, the Infinity Awards and the Keep Australia Beautiful Star Awards. Plastic Free July accepted the awards on behalf of everyone who had participated in the challenge.

Plastics were developed in the early 20th Century and, by the 1960’s were used not only in durable items but also in disposable plastic items and plastic packaging. In the second half of the 20th Century, over 1 billion tons of plastic was manufactured. According to Scientific American, this figure has already doubled in the first ten years of the 21st Century.

The Plastic Free July campaign points out that the world goes through 10 billion plastic bags weekly while the United States uses a staggering 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour and 500 million straws daily. The campaign notes that “recycling is important but it will never be the solution to rapidly expanding consumption,” adding that “every piece of plastic ever produced still remains somewhere in the earth today.”

Instead, Plastic Free July focuses on “refusing, reducing and reusing.”